“The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.”

What can be explained is not poetry.

The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood.

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.

It seems to me that love, if it is fine, is essentially a discipline.

Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.

In dreams begins responsibility.

If what I say resonates with you, it’s merely because we’re branches of the same tree.

When two close kindred meet, What better than call a dance?

It seems to me that true love is a discipline.

The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.

only an aching heart Conceives a changeless work of art.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

And I will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.

By logic and reason we die hourly; by imagination we live.

Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place – service – social service – the ants creed, the bees creed.

I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment.

The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all.

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.

But only a brief moment is granted to the brave one breath or two, whose wage is the long nights of the grave.

Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.

No man pleases by silence; many I please by speaking briefly.

In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.